Chapter 1 - The Six-Hour Contract
The air inside the Hawthorne Hotel lounge smelled of aged bourbon, rain-dampened wool, and the faint, sweet trace of white garden roses that Marin Whitlock had spent eleven agonizing hours arranging for the charity gala upstairs. Her feet throbbed in her sensible, half-scuffed flats. A thin streak of green chlorophyll stained the side of her right thumb—the badge of honor for a florist who did the heavy lifting herself because she couldn't afford to pay an assistant a decent wage.
She had not eaten since a blueberry muffin at seven that morning. Now, pushing midnight, she was running on pure adrenaline, exhaustion, and a sudden, stinging spike of public humiliation.
"You cannot rent a boyfriend because Bennett is bringing Celeste tomorrow," Laurel’s voice shrieked through the phone speaker.
Marin pulled the phone an inch away from her ear, wincing. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the relentless Boston rain streaked headlights into smeared ribbons of crimson and gold. "I'm not renting anyone," Marin muttered, staring into the melting ice of her ginger ale. "I'm strategically avoiding six hours of psychological torture."
Tomorrow was supposed to be about her younger sister, Clara. Clara’s engagement dinner. Fifty relatives, overbearing family friends from their tight-knit hometown in Vermont, and a tidal wave of unsolicited, pitying glances directed entirely at Marin. That she could have handled. She had survived the awkward phases of her twenties, the failed small business ventures, and the relentless gossip of a small town.
What she had not planned for was her mother calling twenty minutes earlier to mention, with the casual cruelty only a parent could manage, that Bennett Hale would be in attendance.
Bennett. Her almost-fiancé. The man who had spent three years whispering about a future white-picket-fence life in the suburbs before abruptly deciding that his future looked significantly shinier with Celeste Waverly—an heiress whose family owned half the commercial real estate in Worcester.
"Mom says everyone already knows I'm coming alone," Marin whispered, her throat tightening. "She used the voice."
"Which voice?"
"The Marin is brave, but we are all quietly terrified she’s going to die alone with twelve cats voice."
Laurel made a sympathetic, pained noise. Marin rubbed her aching forehead, feeling the slight grease of stray hairs sticking to her skin.
"I don't need revenge," Marin said, her voice dropping to a fragile hum. "I don't need Bennett to be jealous. I just want to walk into that room without thirty aunts looking at me like I'm a stray rescue dog nobody wanted."
"You know being single doesn't mean you lost," Laurel said gently.
"I know," Marin looked out at the dark, weeping streets. "I just don't want to spend tomorrow proving that I know."
Silence stretched across the line. Behind her in the lounge, a glass clinked softly against crystal.
She had noticed the man in the corner booth when she first walked in. You couldn't entirely ignore him; he occupied space with a heavy, unyielding gravity. Dark suit. Broad shoulders. Mid-thirties. He had been sitting entirely alone for an hour, one hand resting beside an untouched glass of scotch, his face half-shadowed by a brass table lamp. He hadn't looked at her once.
At least, she hadn't thought he had.
"Fine," Laurel sighed, conceding defeat. "Hypothetically speaking. What kind of boyfriend are we looking for?"
Despite her misery, a dry, humorless smile touched Marin's lips. "Someone calm. Polite. Gainfully employed. Ambitious, that would be nice. Tall."
"I'm hanging up."
"Handsome. Good night, Laurel."
"Wait—six hours? You only have six hours before the dinner?"
"Six hours. And then he turns back into a pumpkin."
Marin ended the call before Laurel could laugh again, dropping her forehead into her palm. "This is officially the most pathetic night of my life," she muttered to the empty air of her table.
"Six hours is oddly specific."
The voice didn't come from the phone. It came from right behind her.
Male. Low, resonant, and carrying a quiet weight that made the hairs on the back of Marin's neck stand straight up. It took her brain a full three seconds to process that the stranger from the dark corner booth had crossed the floor without a sound.
Marin turned slowly in her seat.
He was standing right there. Not smiling. Not looking embarrassed that he had blatantly eavesdropped on a deeply private, slightly unhinged phone call. He was just watching her with cool, gray-blue eyes that seemed entirely too sharp for casual conversation. Up close, the reality of him was staggering. The dark suit wasn't just expensive; it was custom-tailored, fitting his broad frame with a razor-sharp precision that made her seventy-dollar work dress look like a burlap sack. Dark brown hair was pushed back neatly from a strong brow. Clean-shaven, severe jawline, roughly thirty-five years old. There was nothing flashy or trendy about him—no ostentatious watch, no designer logos. Just an aura of absolute, terrifying control.
"Excuse me?" Marin managed, her heart suddenly hammering against her ribs.
He glanced casually at the antique grandfather clock ticking near the entrance of the lounge. "You said you needed a boyfriend by tomorrow. For exactly six hours."
Heat rushed up her neck, flooding her cheeks with mortifying crimson. "You were listening to my conversation?"
"You were broadcasting it four tables away," he replied smoothly, his voice a low gravel that sent a strange, unexpected shiver down her spine.
"That doesn't answer my question."
Something flickered in his gray-blue eyes—a brief, dark spark of amusement that vanished before it could take shape. "Yes."
Panic flared. Marin snatched her worn wool coat off the back of the barstool, shoving her arms into the sleeves with jerky, uncoordinated movements. "Wonderful. Good night."
"What time should I pick you up?"
Her hand froze halfway through the sleeve. The fabric caught on her elbow. For a long, suspended moment, the only sound in the room was the heavy drumming of rain against the thick glass windows. She turned her head slowly, her eyes wide.
"What did you just say?"
He didn't blink. He reached down, buttoning his suit jacket with one slow, deliberate hand. Across the room, the bartender suddenly straightened up, his polishing rag freezing in his grip, his posture snapping to attention like a soldier facing a general.
"Tomorrow," the man said, his tone entirely conversational. "Your family event. What time should I pick you up?"
Marin stared at him, waiting for the hidden camera, the sarcastic punchline, the realization that this was an elaborate practical joke orchestrated by Laurel. None of it came. The man just stood there, looking at her as if he routinely offered to impersonate boyfriends for desperate florists between sips of scotch.
"You cannot possibly be serious," she whispered.
"I usually am."
"You don't even know my name."
His gaze dropped briefly, lingering for a fraction of a second on the embroidered name tag still clipped crookedly to the lapel of her work tunic: Marin — Floral Lead. Then his eyes rose back to hers, piercing and immovable.
"Now I do."
May you like
Every logical instinct screaming inside Marin's head told her to run—to grab her coat, bolt out into the rain, and catch the nearest subway train home. Instead, she stood frozen, trapped in the orbit of a total stranger who had just volunteered to step into the lion's den of her personal life for half a day.
And as the silence stretched between them, the panic in her chest slowly shifted into something much more dangerous: a reckless, desperate curiosity.
